It’s Tea Party time in DC
Today’s the big day for demonstrations against the spending spree in Washington.
I’m wondering, though, what are “tens of thousands?” Is it closer to ten thousand or closer to ninety? One thing’s for sure, there will be some disagreement about the number of people who show up, depending on who’s reporting. And another likelihood is that the MSM won’t cover this much if at all, and if they do they’ll emphasize the “angry lunatic” angle.
[ADDENDUM: Well, at least CNN is certainly covering it. They’ve got a live feed here.
Meanwhile, Obama continues his relentless battle against strawmen. Earth to Obama: Republicans aren’t suggesting we retain the “status quo” on healthcare. But of course you already know that.]
Neo,
Eight friends and my husband and I are driving to LA for the 9-12 Protest Rally. Will report back on the crowd size.
The leftists are busy calling in dozens of bomb-threats.
Just saw some pictures and I would say it’s closer to 90K then 10K (if not more) In fact on the mall it looked like more people than at the million man march.
This from Vodkapundit:
Stacy was calling in to tell me about his talk with Barbara Espinosa. She’s on the ground at 11th & Pennsylvania Avenue, where they’re metering the crowd. We’re not talking about taking sample counts from a helicopter than extrapolating some dumb figure.
They’re actually counting people.
And as of about noon Eastern, more than 450,000 people had walked by.
And as Stacy can tell you from the traffic, there are more coming in. Many more.
http://pajamasmedia.com/vodkapundit/2009/09/12/they-will-be-heard/
CORRECTION
It’s ABC (TV, radio? Not sure.) that pegged the crowd at two million, not CNN. Official estimate is 1.5 – but those numbers always sound inflated. Settle for a million and call it a damn fine day.
We can count on the MSM to downplay it and Obama and the Democrats to lie about it, but the Tea Party folks have broken the door down and will not be denied.
God bless ’em.
Now it’s a matter of all of us keeping the pressure on.
And for every person there on the mall today … how many wish they could have gone, but couldn’t afford it, had other commitments; ten, fifteen, twenty or a hundred.
Be very afraid, our permanently elected aristocracy in Congress … be very, very afraid.
Nonetheless, I suspect we are in for an uphill battle if the jauntily optimistic Mark Steyn writes this in National Review:
My sense from Wednesday’s speech is that the president’s gonna shove this through in some form or other. It may cause a little temporary pain in Blue Dog districts in 2010, but the long-term gains will be transformative and irreversible.
Meanwhile, Obama continues his relentless battle against strawmen. Earth to Obama: Republicans aren’t suggesting we retain the “status quo” on healthcare. But of course you already know that.
Just before that statement, Obama said, “I will not waste time with those who have made the calculation that it’s better politics to kill this plan than improve it.”
In other words, the choice is (1) enact My Plan with or without some tweaking, or (2) status quo.
What’s liberal about that? Much less sensible?
I just returned from a TEA Party here in Washington State. Maybe 150 hardy souls of all ages and ethnic backgrounds turned out. What we lacked in numbers was made up in spirit.
Living in a Blue State, can be a painful experience. However, we received many honks and supportive gestures. We also received a number of single digit salutes. To which I uniformly replied, “We love you too.” It was an uncharacteristic 86 degrees standing by the side of the main thoroughfare holding our signs and waving to people driving by. Four hours in the broiling sun is not what I would prefer to do. But when I think about what our our warriors in Iraq and Afghanistan endure, it seems a small thing.
Had an opportunity to talk with a gentleman who is running to represent our district in the state legislature. He has a good grasp of the fiscal problems that Washington State faces. (In some ways as bad as California.) We will be working hard to get him elected to office.
This is grass roots politics at its best. I feel really confident that we are going to elect some fiscal conservatives at all levels of government in the next two years.
The energy we are spending on this Universal Health care business, why stop at wishing for Universal Health Care, why not just wish that we all never die? There’s something very disturbing and groveling about this all this. It’s dangerous because it distorts the way we thinking and at worse — it make people believe that maybe it can be so and few things have killed more and ruined the lives of generations more than this proposition.
TEA Party in small town Wisconsin (maybe 10,000 population). A couple hundred showed for a really great time. Many cars drove by honking and waving support. Congress and the White House can ignore us at their peril.
The genesis of this movement was Rick Santelli’s rant last spring and Glenn Beck’s 9-12 project. The recent successes of Gateway Pundit and Glenn Beck on the Van Jones case are related to this movement as was the great work of a couple of young people taking on Acorn with subsequent help from Breitbart. All of this was without any involvement by the MSM.
The rules have changed and the voters are restless. Years ago Phil Gramm pointed out that you have big problems when you have more people in the wagon than pulling the wagon. I think people pulling the wagon sense the tipping point is fast approaching if Obama has his way. That’s his plan.
The thousands of people who have been going to tea parties and town hall meetings all over the country are going to get involved in the 2010 elections with time and money. The blue dog Democrats had better get the message if they want to be in Washington in 2011.
A time lapse video of the crowd…
http://rhetorican.com/2009/09/12/time-lapse-aerial-video-of-912-protestors/
via instapundit
The terrible irony is that Obamacare is not by Obama. There’s good old HR3200, all 1000-plus pages of it, but there are 4 bills, unknown as to content, in Senate committees. What Obama says to the nation is BS, utter b*llsh*t. He is truly a Dear Leader in development and in desire. Of course he has his running dogs in Congress.
In the end, I’m with Steyn. But all we can do is fight. We must fight our internal enemy on our terms, not theirs. Ghandi used passive resistance and pacifism because those were the only tools available against the Brits. We will have to do the same–find the right tools. That may mean selective, or general, strikes.
We must hang together against this egomaniacal tyrant. As the Tea Parties strengthen, politicians will recover their spines and join in the cry, “You lie.”
Went down to DC for the tea party today.
Arrived at the Vienna, VA Metro parking lot about 8:15 and it was just filling up with cars with not normally seen license plates from KY, NC, WV, SC, NY, Indiana, OH, TN, NM–you name it, with most cars filled with multiple occupants. Trains to DC were jammed with protestors, many of who assembled at Freedom Plaza at 1350 Pennsylvania Ave.–a large open space that by 9:30 A.M. was a sea of people and flags, with more people streaming into the area by the minute.
The march to the Capitol down Pennsylvania Avenue covered the wide ceremonial avenue–curb to curb–with a constant dream of more and more people coming to join the throng from all directions. An enormous and diverse array of signs, almost all hand made, and on every topic imaginable–Taxes, Spending, Deficits, the Czars, anti-Obama, anti-Socialist, anti-Democrat, anti-Congress, Pro-Life, anti- Health Care Reform bill, anti-Cap and Trade Bill, Pro-gun ownership, Biblical quotations, the occasional Obama as Joker picture–you name it. An enormously diverse cross section of America marching and occasionally chanting–mostly middle/working class, a few somewhat rough looking bikers here and there, as well as some well turned out, obviously upper class types, teenagers, college age marchers, many whole, multi-generational families, lots of older folks–40-50s and older, young families with children in strollers–the crowd was predominantly White, with scatterings of Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians, all in a good mood and very well behaved.
I walked up and down Capitol Hill and the Mall, to get a feel for the size and extent of the crowd as of around 12:45–it filled the lawns in front of the capitol, densely packed Capitol Circle, the street that runs below the lawn, packed all of the perimeter of the Reflecting Pool, and down past the Arboretum to 3rd Street, where the flat part of the Mall begins, with crowds tailing off as you got further down the Mall towards the Washington Monument, and always more people came. Aerial views and other pictures taken later in the demo showed many more people filling the space from the reflecting pool down to the Washington Monument, so how many people were there in this enormous crowd?
As of now, estimates vary from a low of, say, 60,000 to 500,000, to a Police Estimate of 1.2 million, ABCs estimate of 1.5 million all the way up to 2.0 or even 2.5 million. If it was even 1 million–and it could well have been–this would apparently make today’s march the largest political rally in American history.
Good for everyone who did show up!
This really is a grassroots phenom — last night I clicked around for about fifteen minutes trying to find out whether was a tea party in my city or where the closest might be.
The answer was not in my city but two small townhalls about an hour away in different directions.
Meanwhile the story didn’t even show up in Google News until about an hour ago, and not as a top story, but in the US section below the fold and below some blather about Schwarzenegger. The headline title: The hypocrisy of tea party conservatives.
Yep. That’s how this game is played.
To Wolla Dalbo,
Great report! I’ve seen many blog pictures that were impressive. Watched Glenn Beck tonight with his coverage. Yet, I get a better feel for it from your report. Thanks!
Another great thing about the DC Tea Party is that Obama’s supporters don’t dare try a competing demonstration, because they will lose terribly, and they know it.
The bloom is way off Obamamania. Obama’s strategy now is to hold his party together as best he can and muscle down hard on the Blue Dogs to get legislation passed. Obama is not talking to us anymore.
In less than eight months Obama has all but irrevocably alienated about half the country.
One thing of note:
Whether its 1 million, or 1.5, or two, it’s x million people with JOBS who showed up.
Reports are there was ZERO trash left behind by the protesters.
Note the date and time: it’s when Obama became a lame duck.
How long ago was it that a crowd of one million spread across 20-30 international cities was something Bush could *not* ignore and *had* to do what they wanted?
Just think if we used that metric for Saturday – added up all the tea parties across the nation – just think on that a moment. Even if we *were* bussing people in that is staggering. Heck if we could handle the logistics of doing that – wow. There is no way this can be seen as anything other than what it is – a grass roots uprising of the population.
I have to wonder if we have *ever* had a single protest this large and if we did what it was over. I can not recall any.
The silence is – deafening here. The next few days are gonna be interesting as to how they handle it. They *have* to be sitting and thinking if they even *can* spin it away or ignore it.
This has also become more than just about health care – millions aren’t going to just show up for that too. Sadly Republicans are only slightly less incompetent as the Dems so I still do not really know where I think this is going to go (or, because of that, where I want it to go either).
Heck with turnout like that I might even be persuaded that a new “third party” has a real shot at killing at least on of the now traditional sides and I’m one that has always maintained that third parties are a waste of a vote. At the very least I expect quite a number of incumbents to loose out in 2010 which would really throw a lot of things up in the air.
I went to the 912 Project event in Fort Worth. In a semi constant, all day semi downpour: somewhere between 5000 and 10000 people showed up. The numbers, to me, given the weather and the internet only publicity, were unbelievable. People were drenched, and did not care. Grandmothers. People in wheelchairs. HUNDREDS of home made signs which were hilarious. People were in a good mood, yet were determined enough to come out in the rain and send a message. The crowd was largely aged 40 and above, with many senior citizens.
If the Obama Admin is not concerned about these gatherings, they should be. These were people with jobs who took their day off to slog through the rain to get from their distant parking space and to the protest. This is the type of crowd which, once stirred to action, WILL NOT back down. And the crowd doesn’t like socialism; doesn’t like having their freedoms picked off one by one. I don’t see these types of people fading into the background and going away. I see their numbers getting larger. They are a hornets nest which has been stirred up, and is unafraid if and unwowed by “BARACK! THE MUSICAL.”
Now Google News is headlining the Tea Party story: Angry, Ignorant Tea Party Crowd: Heckler Joe Wilson is Their Hero with a crowd estimate of 60,000 – 70,000.
I use various Google services and I’m mostly pleased with them, but the times I haven’t been I have looked for an email address to send feedback and so far I haven’t found one.
The silence is – deafening here.
strcpy: I can’t think of a protest as large either.
I’m sure that Obama, the Democratic leadership, their supporters (including the MSM) are poleaxed. There is no way they were ready for this. It was not in their game plans at all. They have been out-organized by a huge margin.
What’s worse for them, and I suspect they now realize it, is that this opposition has not peaked.
“What’s worse for them, and I suspect they now realize it, is that this opposition has not peaked.”
There are two govts I fear. In both cases it is where you have what we do today – nearly all power consolidated into one group and that power is near absolute.
The first one, and the lesser one, is one that feels it can do whatever it wants as it has “won”. IMO that is what we have seen so far.
The second, and the by far more dangerous one, is one that knows it has lost but still retains power for a short time. Protests like this one can very will flip them into this mode.
To use an analogy – a pride of Lions knows it is the top of the chain. They can do anything anywhere they want on the African Plains – however they also realize that they better be quite sure of their superiority before tackling something like an elephant or water buffalo – yet they can do so if/when they choose. This means they pretty much leave them alone.
But then, when they choose wrong and realize it is true death or victory they become … frenzied.
IMO Democrats felt they were lions and have attacked that Water Buffalo (they could still beat the Elephant hands down – but the tea party Water Buffalo, not so much – amusingly enough I didn’t start off with that symbolism in mind) and it’s a matter of when they figure out they have lost.
I’ve told many a conservative/libertarian not to worry over much about drastic legislation until Obama’s second term or if they go so far as to know they have lost. As long as they have to worry about re-election they will not do too much, once they no longer have to worry over it all bets are off.
As such I think I will find the next few days quite interesting. Have they realized it (and how can they not) and how will they react if so? Not that I want people to *not* protest, but it may very well push many over into voting along their more radical leanings because they figure they only have the short time anyway.
I do think it is only a matter of time before that sinks in and I do not see Republicans stepping up either – indeed I see them as realizing (and pretty much deserving) of the same ousting. I still think it could end up being bloody and that is a large part as to why – what will we do if they decide not to go gracefully into that goodnight (and I expect at least some to try not too)?
strcpy: Could be. I await the response from Obama & Co. with great interest and trepidation.
Obama wheeled out his big gun with the Joint Session speech without much effect. Today the Tea Party roared back at him.
Obama could respond with frenzy, but then again, that describes his approach from Day One. I think he would have been much more dangerous if he had governed from the center with the occasional strategic lurch to the left.
The headline in the New York Times still says that “Thousands” marched. In the Washington Post it’s “tens of thousands” but practically every sentence in both articles has a word like “angry” or “roiling” or “boisterous.”
But I do have a complaint about the protestors rather than the coverage. I am seeing way too many pictures in the press of people carrying signs depicting Obama with a Hitler moustache. People. Don’t do this. Please don’t do this. It makes those protestors — and by association, everyone else around them — look as stupid and uninformed and vicious as those Chimpy McBushitler folks last time around, and it gives the media an excuse to write the whole movement off as loony wingnut extremism (without, of course, feeling any need to explain why they didn’t do the same thing with the countless anti-Bush Nazi comparisons.) The best hope for the Tea Partiers to be taken seriously by the mandarins of the government and the media is to rely on their character as decent, ordinary Americans who care about their country, understand freedom, and have had enough. Such people don’t — or shouldn’t — make posters of Obama as Hitler.
Mrs Whatsit–as I observed and, I did carefully observe, this enormous crowd, by circulating through it, it was about as “rowdy” and “boisterous” as a march by the matriarchs of the DAR, and despite the many, probably hundreds, of signs I read, I believe I never saw even one Obama as Hitler sign, so I am sure the MSM worked very hard to turn one up.
watched the news last nite… zero mention.
almost 2 million people show up on a saturday protesting and no news!!!
that speaks a lot in itself…
Wolla — oh, I believe you. Every picture and video clip of the march I’ve seen has featured cheerful, polite, civilized marchers who don’t seem anywhere near as boisterous as the anti-Vietnam DC marchers I recall from my misspent youth. But practically every news article I’ve seen has been packed with words like “noisy” and “angry” and “loud.” For a while yesterday even the Washington Post’s headline had the word “loud” in it. How could this be? One would almost think the papers were reporting their biases rather than the facts. Almost. But . . . naaaaaah, couldn’t be.
ABC News reports,
“Carrying signs depicting President Obama as Adolf Hitler and the Joker, and chanting slogans such as “‘No big government” and “Obamacare makes me sick,” approximately 60,000 to 70,000 people flooded Pennsylvania Ave, according to the Washington DC Fire Department.”
Yet doesn’t provide even ONE photograph of ANY person carrying such a sign.
CNN reports,
“As the tour moves on, Nazi imagery becomes more prominent”
Yet provide only ONE photograph of a such a sign NOT IN D.C. but in Dallas, TX.
The fix is in folks. The leftwing media doesn’t like what the folks have to say and the fix is in.
I believe one of the funniest and most media-apt signs (to address your point, Mrs Whatsit) was the one pictured in Vodkapundit’s report which said
“It doesn’t Matter What This Sign Says, You’ll Call It Racism Anyway.”
I was there. Our bus left SW PA @ 5:00 a.m. We took the Metro from Rockville Center and got into the city about 11:20. I myself have no way to determine how many people were there, but it was far and away the most people I’ve ever seen with my own eyes.
A couple of things struck me the most. One, everybody was joking about being an “angry mob”. 🙂 Two, a widespread goal was to dump the Congress — everybody’s got to go.
Frankly, I hope MSM continues to downplay and ridicule this event and the whole Tea Party movement. On this issue, and perhaps many others, the Leftists greatest weakness is They believe their own lying propaganda.
I’ll go out on a limb here and now: yesterday, Sept. 12th, 2009, the Democrats lost the majority in the next Congress. Sure, I could be wrong, but if they do… you heard it here first. 🙂
I was there and it was awesome. I did see many Obama/Hitler and Obama/Joker posters. However, that’s okay because the comparisons are apt.
The image i saw the most was the Gadsden flag.
I would say attendance was definitely in at least the half million range.
Good times.
Sgt. Mom: Best. Sign. Ever.
Kustie the Klown,
I’ll take your word for it, but still I have a problem. Sitting in my living room watching it all on TV I saw none (repeat zilch) representations of Obama as Hitler or any Nazi symbols (though I’m sure there were some) – which is a good thing. Why?
First, because (as noted by the ADL and other Jewish organizations) it diminishes the atrocities of WWII. In other words the comparisons are NOT apt.
Second, it gives the media and legislative propagandists fodder to mis-characterize everyone at the 9-12 protests – as they have done already.
As for the Obama Joker images I would agree, that the “comparisons are apt”. Of course, what the media fails to report is that the image was created by an ultra-liberal Kucinich supporter from Chicago of Arab descent.
The whole thing is also telling you what they are trying or are willing to create as the end result. if they are pushing that everyone is to the right of them and those are hitler, fascist, nazi’s… then they are taking the anti-thetical position and they are stalinists (which is really what they have always showed they were).
freedom being a moderate position between two tyrannies makes no sense.
oligarchy to anarchy with republic in the middle is really all there is.
so change from a republic an only lead to one thing, a form of real oligarchy where they control law, and are no longer constrained by all the rules and laws that we are also constrained by.
We are trying to warn the country that its current leadership is pushing for reformation of the country into a fascist state.
I don’t see where the controversy is in drawing apt comparisons between Obama (and the democrat leadership in Congress) and their Nazi forebears.
I would think that if they wish not to be portrayed as Nazis, they should stop behaving like Nazis. If the shoe fits. . . .
I will post a link to my pics from the event shortly.
From a purely historical standpoint, comparing Obama to Hitler in their first in-office years is actually quite appropriate. Despite what many seem to think, Hitler did not take his gloves off early on. He and the Nazis were consolidating power then, just like Obama and Dems are now trying to do. The difference is the German Volk was cowed by WW I reparations, hyperinflation, then the depression, and did not have a long tradition of individual political liberty, nor a Constitution like ours.
Our struggle is far from over. The outcome is in doubt. But we are getting stronger, day by day. The battle is ours to lose, and we must not lose.
Don’t ever give up. Remember Patrick Henry.
If you want to see the signs carried by demonstrators, look at the selection pictured by a participant, here.
From Vodkapundit:
Charlie Martin – a computer scientist with extensive intelligence experience – emails from his secret bunker near Boulder, CO:
I did a back-of-envelope based on the photos and reports. A pretty dense crowd is about 1.8 people per square meter, and the National Mall alone is about 125 hectares, 1.25 million square meters. So that would be 2.3 million people.
Given the report from Steve of an actual literal count of 450K early on, I think the 2 million number is *very* plausible.
Knowing Charlie like I do, I’m inclined to trust his guestimates more than most people’s “facts.”
Which in this case… whoa.
And we haven’t even begun to hear the numbers from the other Tea Parties.
Meanwhile ABCis objecting to misquotation:
At no time did ABC News, or its affiliates, report a number anywhere near as large [as 1 – 1.5 million]. ABCNews.com reported an approximate figure of 60,000 to 70,000 protesters, attributed to the Washington, D.C., fire department. In its reports, ABC News Radio described the crowd as “tens of thousands.”
The near blackout and blatant misrepresentations of yesterday’s Washington Tea Party marks one of the most Orwellian days in our MSM’s history. And that’s saying something!
Kustie the Klown,
We’re going to have to agree to disagree on this one. There are thousands of points in which to slam the Obama administration without launching into histrionic exaggeration.
And yes, comparing a two-bit megalomaniac and oligarchic leglislature to a monstrously evil dictator and regime that murdered upwards of 6 million Jews as well as millions of Ukranainians, Poles, Gypsies etc. is histrionic exaggeration.
Is it any wonder the “chosen one” took for for “frankenland”?
“Obama could respond with frenzy, but then again, that describes his approach from Day One. ”
By frenzy I mean just go ahead and pass single-payer, carbon cap/trade, and all the leftists wet dreams. We have *not* seen anything remotely like that. They have the majorities to do it with no discussion, no spin, no nothing and I think if/when they realize they are going to go the way of the dodo that they will just pass it like mad.
“I think he would have been much more dangerous if he had governed from the center with the occasional strategic lurch to the left.”
To some extent – it’s hard to say how all of this will end up. I’m afraid of the damage done either way and I’m not sure which I think would have been worse.
“The near blackout and blatant misrepresentations of yesterday’s Washington Tea Party marks one of the most Orwellian days in our MSM’s history.”
Personally I do not think the silence is a blackout as much as I think it is “shock and awe” (to use a phrase they erroneously latched on with Bush/Iraq).
Lets face it, how *can* they report on this? The few reporting 50-60 thousand are a joke. All it takes is just the picture of the wide open area at the end of the long narrow strip to easily show near 200k. Given that the narrow part was also full it has always estimated to hold a good million. Their entire narrative for months was blown out of the water.
So even given that (in one picture) along with the overflow around the place and you have a *low* of a million people. Indeed 1.75 million is a *conservative* estimate based on the photos (and why the Nutroots people are trying to claim the photos are fake).
I see it as more an issue of not knowing how to handle it than anything else. I do not think they can do a blackout (and I think they are smart enough to know this too), but confused silence can go on a little longer.
I see it as more an issue of not knowing how to handle it than anything else. I do not think they can do a blackout (and I think they are smart enough to know this too), but confused silence can go on a little longer.
strcpy: Interesting. Though it seems to me that if the media can get away with barely a nod to the mammoth Washington Tea Party today, why bother to follow up tomorrow?
It’s forty years later and we are still celebrating fookin’ Woodstock, man!
Vintage Mark Steyn:
Oblio: Beats me how this makes sense for the media in terms of even their own self-interest unless they’ve already done a backroom deal with Obama for the Pravda/Izvestia position.
The fact of the matter is that, as of today, the majority of people in the U.S. still get their news–and therefore a large chunk of their view of reality, how it is shaped and defined, what is reasonable and unreasonable, likely and unlikely, and what goes on in it–from the MSM. So, it does, indeed, matter if the MSM is able to ignore, distort, or seriously minimize the 9/12 March on Washington, and/or make the marchers look like racists, far rightists, haters, anti-American, paid agitators or crazies.
The crowd estimates are also important because, for many people, quantity equals quality i.e. a protest that draws 10,000 must be much less significant, about a much less important issue, than one that draws 100,000, and the protest drawing 100,000 must be less significant than one that draws 1,000,000 or more.
It must also be pointed out that these were a million or even two million plus people–a cross section of formerly complacent, docile, “ordinary citizens” who have jobs, families and responsibilities, who came here on their own nickel, who paid their own way, and often drove several days to get to D.C., and that they were not the usual Leftist “rent a mob,” composed of a small leftist “cadre” from far left/communist organizations, bored or thrill seeking college students, and college radicals–who do not have real jobs and who have a lot of free time on their hands–who are hoping to perhaps get a kick or a hookup out of it, with perhaps, as filler, assorted fellow travelers, weirdos and street people.
Our job is to spread the word about this protest–its composition, size, objectives and significance–as far and wide as we can, to counter the MSM blackout/spin.
huxley: it’s not in their interest. They are going down. They have destroyed their credibility. If the Times survives, people will learn to find out what is true by seeing what the Times denies.
Here are my photos from the Tea Party. Enjoy.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=108701&id=633164584&ref=mf
Quick and dirty estimate:
PA avenue was covered from Freedom Plaza to the Capital; that is about 1 mile (WH to Capitol 1.2 miles) of people on a street 6 lanes wide or 80 ft from Google data. A mile is 5280 ft x 80 ft at 2.5 sq feet per person (Obama’s inauguration number for the mall) gives us over 168,960 people just there at any one time. This human traffic lasted for 3 hours from the media. With the average human walking speed of 3 miles per hour, that is 168,960 people passing a point every 33 minutes or over 3 hours being 9 x 168,960 = 1,520,640. Although, like me not all people started at Freedom Plaza. Many went directly to the Capitol for good “seats” and not all came down PA Ave. The police also asked the protesters to leave the plaza two hours early. Nor does it count the time after 12:30 when people were still arriving or the people on the sidewalks along PA Ave. So the number of 1.5 million may be low.
it’s not in their interest. They are going down. They have destroyed their credibility.
Oblio: It is clear that they are doing so consciously. The way the media ignored the stories about Van Jones, ACORN, and the 912 Tea Party — all in just one week — is not a matter of unconscious bias.
My take is that they see they are hemorrhaging cash and they don’t see a solution, so they will go out as kamikazes for the great cause of liberalism. And some of them I do believe are looking for a quid pro quo bailout from the Obama administration.
I facebooked my pix too, last night, 168 of them. I spent an hour and 15 minutes Saturday afternoon just walking around to take pix.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2015951&id=1549659282&l=fb679e749e
The Hitler with mustache pictures were carried by the hard-left Lyndon Larouche supporters. They showed up at a Cleveland rally a few weeks ago. I did see a few other signs associating Obama with Fascists and Communists, but most were protesting healthcare, cap&trade, spending and taxes. My wife and I were at the rally from 9:30am to 5:00pm. Here are a few of the pictures I took.
Acorn was ejected…
they were selling the yellow dont tread on me flags…
that is, using opposition to fund themselves by capitalism at opposition events.
This high resolution panoramic picture–taken from the top of the Capitol building–documenting the magnitude and extent of the 9/12 demo has just surfaced (see http://iowntheworld.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/capitol-view-lo-res.jpg).
The link above doesn’t seem to be working. Try this link and just click on the image (http://iowntheworld.com/blog/?p=6500 ) .
I have done my own study base on a devised stationary methodology and calculation which you can find here.
It’s backed by visual evidence (pictures and clips) all available in the same entry, plus determining the boundaries of the rally and calculation of the final tally derived from the density of the crowd at each given block. My calculus puts the figures around 130k up to 160k.